Tag: california

Two dancers in a sand dune

From Stella Ruess dance scrapbook, page 31 (detail) | src University of Utah
From Stella Ruess dance scrapbook, page 31 (image on bottom of page) | src University of Utah

Women at Glacier Point · 1900s

George Fiske (1835-1918) :: Two women doing a “skirt dance” on the precarious Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park, 1900-1902. Glass negative. | src USC Libraries
George Fiske (1835-1918) :: Kitty Tatch and Katherine Hazelston [waitresses in a nearby hotel, the Yosemite’s Sentinel] in their famous cliff-edge dance. Late 1890s. | src NPS
Charles C. Pierce (1861-1946) :: Two people on Glacier Point, three thousand two hundred feet above the Merced River in Yosemite Valley (Nr. 905), 1900-1910. | USC Libraries
Charles C. Pierce (1861-1946) :: Woman (Miss Loomis?) standing on the precarious Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park, 1900-1902 | USC Libraries
Kitty Tatch and Katherine Hazelstine or Hazelston, also nicknamed “Kitty,” nearly can-can themselves off Overhanging Rock in the late 1890s. The pair were waitresses in Yosemite’s Sentinel Hotel and apparently shared a cat-like indifference to stomach-churning drops. Their famous cliff-edge dance was captured by photographer George Fiske. | src San Francisco Gate
George Fiske (1835-1918) :: Two women standing out on the rock are holding hands and doing a high kick to the left. Albumen print mounted on grey/green board. View of Overhanging Rock at Glacier Point.
In ink on verso: Dancers on Overhanging Rock at Glacier Point’. Photographer’s stamp on center of back of mount “Geo. Fiske, Photo. Yosemite Valley, Cal.” | src NPS / YOSE 5252

Kitty Tatch was a maid and waitress at the Sentinel Hotel in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Dressed in long wide skirts identifying her clearly as a woman, she danced and did high kicks at Overhanging Rock, 3,000 feet above the Valley, on Glacier Point with her friend Katherine Hazelston as George Fiske photographed them. These pictures were later made into postcards, autographed by Tatch, and sold for years. / quoted from National Park Service > Women of Yosemite : The Adventurers

Photocomposite from images # 1 (Fiske) and # 3 (Pierce)

Girl at the Cliff House · postcard

Detail from a postcard featuring a girl at the beach with the Victorian Cliff House (San Francisco) between 1896-1907
Postcard featuring a girl at the beach with the Victorian Cliff House (San Francisco) before the fire of 1907 | src cliff-house-project
Victorian Cliff House, San Francisco, vintage postcard. Between 1896- Sept. 1907 | src cliff-house-project